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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to initiate armed conflict, long considered a vital legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the years since September 11; the president, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, authorizing military actions on vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the leadership of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also shifted to the executive, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel congressionally authorized expenditures and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; almost all legislation must currently be packed into spending packages, huge perennial essential omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these don’t pass – and more and more, they do not – the federal government simply shuts down. That is, large sections of the administration do – and it’s not clear how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down for the entire month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the issue of dominance of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans care who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric could assist California’s Proposition 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five more congressional positions to the Democratic Party if it is embraced by the electorate in a special election in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and Washington draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an imbalance that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The California measure is explicitly intended as a response to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which implemented maps that will give the GOP an five more seats in the state congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s example in seeking to alter districts.)

The state initiative seems probable to be approved, as Democratic and liberal electorate react with concern and anger to the president’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to change districts triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to foreclose any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have questioned the measure on strictly principled pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is not in question, they say, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, necessarily, that the influence of opposing voices is muted, and that the procedure of debate, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.

It is valuable considering each of these criticisms on their own terms. The initial critique, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their respective districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a causal point: it is illogical to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of revenge to change boundaries that secure long-term seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total lack of similar actions by the left, for years.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic wish for a different nation than the one that the US has turned into. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our values, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is harmful for politicians to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the level of harm he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how far we have fallen from a state more like a representative government. But they are required. It is only after the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been won that we can mourn what opposing it has transformed us into.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new blue house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the ability to investigate. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to great effect. In the coming years, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• The columnist is a Guardian US writer